There is a pretty fascinating debate happening right now on David Sacks’ Facebook page. Exactly one month after the Yammer sale to Microsoft closed, Sacks is feeling pretty bearish about the startup ecosystem.
“I think Silicon Valley as we know it may be coming to an end …,” Sacks posts, arguing mainly that because major Internet companies (like um, Microsoft?) are on the prowl for innovative ideas, it’s too risky and costly for entrepreneurs to attempt to create successful new companies.
“How … show all text

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of "legitimate rape" have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing show all text

Hipset is a music discovery site launching today from Y Combinator’s Tracks.by that makes sure you never miss the hot new songs, videos, and other content from the artists you Like on Facebook — updates which the social network might not show in your feed.
If launched on its own, Hipset would just be a fun site for listeners. But while disarmingly simple, it’s the culmination of Tracks.by’s year-long master plan to shake up the music marketing industry. Here’s how Hipset is going to rock you.
T… show all text

It’s just another mutherf*ckin’ day for Dre, so I begin like this No medallions, dreadlocks, or black fists Just that gangsta glare with the gangsta raps —Dr. Dre, Let Me Ride
At Opsware I used to teach a management expectations course because I deeply believed in training. In it, I made it clear that I expected every manager to meet with her people on a regular basis. I even gave instructions on how to conduct a 1:1 meeting so there could be no excuses.
Then one day while I happily went about… show all text

Twitter has posted some of their upcoming API-policy lockdowns and restrictions in this post from Michael Sippey, euphemistically titled “Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API”.
First, from Twitter’s Display Guidelines, which will become requirements for all apps:
“Individual Tweet” section
Embedding tweets in a blog post in any way other than their dynamic embed code is effectively prohibited:
[3a] Reply, Retweet, and Favorite action icons must always be visible for the user to inte… show all text

Klout has been one of my go to punchlines for some time now. For example – in May I wrote a post titled “My Detailed Thoughts On Klout” that contained a single word in the post itself: “Why?”
The problem I had with Klout was that it was just another meaningless social game to play. People were wrecking their heads trying to game it and get their score up higher.
To keep his [Klout] score up, Lee tweets up to 45 times a day—an average of one every 32 minutes. “People like food porn,” he notes, “… show all text

Braintree, a mobile payments company that provides the software that lets a number of popular start-ups, including Fab.com, Airbnb, Uber and LivingSocial, process payments on smartphones, acquired another payments company called Venmo, a service that lets people send and receive money via text message.

Stop the madness The long cycle times for developing mobile apps have led to startup failures that look more like 1999 – it’s like we’ve forgotten all the agile and rapid iteration stuff that we learned over the last 10 years. Stop the madness!
Today, seed stage startups can now get funded, release 1 or 2 versions of their app spread over 9 months, and then fail without making a peep. We learned the benefits of how to iterate fast on the web, and we can do better on mobile too.
How things worked show all text

Update: I still haven’t heard anything from Yahoo, but we’ve learned that the account was fake — apparently Mayer does have an account, but it’s set to private. We’ve also learned that Mayer is searching for a new head of Flickr.
It looks like Flickr may be getting some much-needed love from its corporate parent Yahoo — Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer just created an account on the photo-sharing site.
That may not seem like a big deal, but neither Carol Bartz nor Scott Thompson, Yahoo’s past two … show all text

Homicide Watch is raising funds for A One Year Student Reporting Lab within Homicide Watch DC on Kickstarter! Change the way crime is covered. Create a reporting lab within Homicide Watch DC to cover every murder in Washington for one year.

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court
I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.
I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On Ju… show all text

Under Paul Ryan's plan, Mitt Romney wouldn't pay any taxes for the next ten years — or any of the years after that. Now, do I know that that's true. Yes, I'm certain.

Well, maybe not quite nothing. In 2010 — the only year we have seen a full return from him — Romney would have paid an effective tax rate of around 0.82 percent under the Ryan plan, rather than the 13.9 percent he actually did. How would someone with more show all text

I’m a big fan of the web app Remember the Milk. I love how flexible it is at letting you manage your tasks the way you want. One of the biggest struggles in any system you use is ubiquitous capture. That is, being able to capture an idea or task where ever you are.

A while back, I got to thinking that it would be really cool if I could quickly create a task in Remember the Milk (RTM) via SMS. RTM on the various mobile platforms is great but this way is even faster (for me at least) and you can do it from any SMS enabled phone. The magic that let me realize this dream is the wonderful IFTTT (If this then that) service. It isn’t hard to set up as long as you have all the right pieces in place.

So, to get started, you’ll need your RTM inbox address. Get that by looking in the info tab of the settings section.

Next, go over to IFTTT and create an account if you haven’t already. Then click on Channels and go through the set up process to create an SMS channel and a Gmail channel.

Once all that is set up, head over to my channel http://ifttt.com/recipes/49882 You’ll need to put your RTM inbox address in the “To Address” field. That’s all your really have to do. It isn’t necessary to alter the body section. New SMS’s will go right into you RTM inbox.

Personally, I have other ways my RTM is set up so I don’t like email going into the inbox if there is no need. No reason to clear out a second inbox if I don’t have to. I have a catchall list called Central so I like to use that. I also like to automatically make these next actions so I pre-populate the tags section. You can add several tags separated by comma.

There’s a lot of conflicting data out there about Google+. A few studies over the past few months have portrayed the fledgling social network as relatively moribund, but another recent report from Experian Hitwise says visits to the network are growing substantially, hitting 34.9 million for the week ended Aug. 4 compared to 21.9 million visits for the week ended July 21 — a 59% jump in two weeks.
Whether the network is thriving or not, this research from Umpf, a UK-based social media firm, sh… show all text

Amazon closed a privacy hole on Monday that previously allowed hackers access to Amazon accounts over the phone using just a name, email address and mailing address — three pieces of information easily found for many on the web. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Amazon changed its customer privacy policies on Monday, closing security gaps that were exploited in the identity hacking of Wired reporter Mat Honan on Friday.
Previously, Amazon allowed people to call in and change the email address asso… show all text

You should read Mat Honan’s heartbreaking tale of a hack attack and the ensuing discussion on Techmeme. Much of the story is about Amazon or Apple’s security practices, but I would still advise everyone to turn on Google’s two-factor authentication to make your Gmail account safer and less likely to get hacked.
Two-factor authentication means “something you know” (like a password) and “something you have,” which can be an object like a phone. Here’s a simple video about how it works:

Meet Mat Honan. He just had his digital life dissolved by hackers. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired. Illustration: Ross Patton/Wired
In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook…. show all text

>
This astonishing GIF comes from Nanex, and shows the amount of high-frequency trading in the stock market from January 2007 to January 2012. (Which means that the Knightmare craziness of last week is not included.)
The various colors, as identified in the legend on the right, are all the different US stock exchanges. You might think there are only two stock exchanges in the US, but you’d be wrong: there are only two exchanges where stocks are listed. There are many, many more exchanges where … show all text

Women comprise 47% of the U.S. workforce, but just 25% of the STEM workforce. While the tech sector has a reputation of being occupied by white males, women are making a go at careers in STEM fields.
The success of prominent female leaders such as Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo's Marissa Mayer are bringing more attention to women in the tech sphere. But beyond the Sandbergs and the Mayers, there's a crop of women who are not only leading, but also launching tech startups. Below, we highli… show all text

On Friday, Wired writer Mat Honan recounted the tale of how his iCloud account was hacked which resulted in his iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air getting remote wiped. The point of entry appeared to be his iCloud account which was then used to gain access to Gmail and then his and former-employer Gizmodo's Twitter accounts.
At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I … show all text

So maybe you saw my Twitter going nuts tonight. Or you saw Gizmodo’s Twitter account blow up. Or you saw this in AllThingsD. Or this in the DailyDot. Although embarrassing, Twitter was the least of it. In short, someone gained entry to my iCloud account, used it to remote wipe all of my devices, and get entry into other accounts too.
Here’s what happened:
At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My passwo… show all text

Summary: Microsoft's explanation that Metro was a "code name" is laughably bad spin. The company's sudden decision to throw the term down the memory hole is strange, and developers deserve a full, honest explanation of the reasons behind the change.

Edelman DigitalFormer Mashable COO Will Aid Edelman Digital in Identifying New Potential Opportunities for Clients and Firm
August 2, 2012, NEW YORK, NY: Edelman, the world’s largest public relations firm, announced today that Adam Hirsch will join Edelman Digital as senior vice president of Emerging Media and Technology, effective August 6th. In the newly created position, Hirsch will help operationalize new partnership opportunities, platforms and technologies on behalf of Edelman Digital’s c… show all text

Today, I am excited to announce that Windows 8 has been released to manufacturing (RTM)! This means we’ve completed the product development and testing of the product and have started handing off the final code to our OEM partners. They can now begin preparing new Windows 8 PCs and devices they’ll introduce starting with General Availability. For more on RTM, I suggest reading this blog post from Steven Sinofsky on the Building Windows 8 blog.

We want to take a moment to explain some of our general Trust and Safety policies and procedures, and address the specific case at hand that has unfolded over the past 48-hours (we normally don’t address matters pertaining to individual accounts for the privacy of the account, but here the relevant communications are now public). When our Trust and Safety team receives a report from a user explaining that his/her private personally-identifiable information has been posted on Twitter, we invest… show all text

It’s interesting that Twitter has hijacked our creation of $TICKER ie. $AAPL. It only took four years to ‘fill‘ this hole, though a few months back they told me in a detailed email it was not a hole they wanted to fill.
You can hijack a plane but it does not mean you know how to fly it.
Twitter is about advertising dollars. They have $1 billion of venture money on the line. Lot’s of pressures I am not interested in.
Go check out $HIT or $WAG (walgreen’s) on Twitter search or thousands of other … show all text

Mr. Lehrer said in a statement announcing his resignation: "The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers."

Guy Adams is The Independent's Los Angeles bureau chief. During the Olympics so far, he has carved out a nice spot on the how-much-NBC's-coverage-sucks beat. Now his Twitter account has been suspended&mdash;supposedly because NBC had it cut off after he complained: